How to Gain On-Ice Speed with Off-Ice Training

Note: HUGE thanks to Jarod for writing this article for How To Hockey. This article is a detailed account of how he got his speed up to NHL standards. If you want to say thanks you can tweet this article and mention him https://twitter.com/#!/palmfisher

I have always been a hockey player with average speed. As a professional athlete, I am always looking to improve my skill set, especially in finding my way “in” to the NHL. Last season, my coach sat me down and asked me what I thought was keeping me from playing in the NHL. After a few wrong guesses, he told me that my speed, or lack there of, was not at the NHL level. Despite the amount of training I had done the summer before my rookie year, I had to agree with my coach; I was not fast. There was only one answer…I must have been training wrong. I began my quest to successfully build speed in the following summer. I changed my training technique and became stronger, faster, and sturdier on my feet than ever before. Here is how I did it.

Changing Your Mind Set

In order to work your muscles “smarter” rather than “harder,” you must:

Switch the focus from your quadriceps to the “back of the leg” muscles. These muscles include your gluteals, hamstrings and calves.

Shift from two-leg training to single leg training. By doing this you are able to recruit more stabilizer muscles.

Train with little or no weight and focus more on speed than strength.

I’m happy to say that my new techniques paid off. The very next season, I was noticeably faster and did get my shot in the NHL with the very same coach that gave me the great advice.

Back of the Legs

Focus your mind on working the gluteals and hamstrings during all of your hockey exercises, especially sprinting and jumping.

One way to practice flexing the right muscles is by doing a wall set (sit in a chair-like squat with your back against the wall and hold). Most likely your quadriceps muscles will begin to burn. Without changing position, you can relieve the strain on the quads by tightening up your gluteals and hamstrings.

Think about sitting in that squat position with someone in front of you trying to pull your feet out from underneath you. You would automatically flex your hamstring and glute muscles in order to keep your feet beneath you. This is what you want to flex during the exercise.

Make sure your weight is not on your toes but rather on your heels. Try to lift your toes off the ground. You might feel your lower back begin to pull away from the wall. Counter this tendency by flexing your core and keep your back flat against the wall.

Your hamstrings and glutes should be tight during the entire motion of a squat. Try tapping your fingers against your hamstrings. This will help tell your brain to work those muscles.

When you are doing it right, your hamstrings will be hard. Believe me, this is as much of a mental work out as a physical one. It takes practice to get it right.

Wall Sit Video

Having troubles? Try standing tall. Now drop into a squat position as fast as you can and hold. Your body weight should drop faster than gravity can pull you down because your hamstrings flex to pull your body downward. Continue to flex the hamstrings and fire the glutes on your way up finishing with a slight forward hip thrust – thus forcing the glutes to flex as much as possible. Getting the right muscles to fire during the squat motion took me several workouts. Don’t get discouraged if it takes you some time. Unless you are an Olympic sprinter, you are quad dominant. You have to retrain your muscles to become “back of the leg dominant” and this takes practice.

Stablizers

Every time you take a stride you balance on one blade until your other foot recovers. Thus, single leg balance is key to becoming more stable on skates. Stand with one foot on the ground and do a four to five inch squat.

Want More? Try kneeling on an exercise ball. The pros can stand on the ball and do squats.

Speed and Quickness

When attempting to develop strength, movements should be slow and controlled. When trying to develop speed, all movements should be done with speed and grace. Do every exercise as fast as you can while maintaining control. When you do a squat, try to go down quickly. When you reach 90 degrees (more or less) change direction as fast as you can. Doing squats in this motion works both deceleration and acceleration strength. The muscle fibers work one way to stop your body from moving and another way to get it moving again. You need power through both movements in order to be able to change direction quickly on the ice. When doing jumps or lunges focus on landing soft, using your hamstrings to pull your body down quickly with your hamstrings and exploding upward with your glutes. Again, this is very challenging and takes time to get right.

Changing the way I worked my muscles was not easy. My body wanted to revert back to over using the quadriceps. My workouts were as challenging mentally as they were physically. What kept me going were the results. My hamstrings and glutes grew in size and strength. I began to spring off the ground rather than push. I felt lighter and more stable on the ice, which is exactly what I wanted. Without a doubt, training this way improved my speed and stability on the ice.

I hope this information helps you as much as it helped me. Good luck!

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Hi my name is Jeremy Rupke. My goal is to break every hockey skill down into easy to understand articles and videos. I explain everything step-by-step to help others improve. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook and more, you can follow through the links above.
If you want to learn more about me you can read my about page. Thanks for reading and sharing!

Hi, I read a lot about hatha yoga for hockey players on yoga4hockey.com – do you think it is worth a shot during off-season, since a lot of NHL players have included a yoga routine in their schedules (like O’Reilly, Lundqvist and so on)? Looking forward to your thoughts
(Sorry, if this is doubled somehow – my first comment didn’t go through for some reason)

Ive been doing these since this morning and I all ready feel faster.At 9:00 my fastest time going 25 meters was 30 seconds,35 seconds and 25 seconds.I tried 15 mins ago and I was going more of an average of 20.This is great!

So with what Jarod is saying here about training the calves, hamstrings and glutes for faster skating rather than the front of the legs.
Would jogging backwards on a treadmill or on the street improve the same thing rather than always running forward?

Thanks Jarrod!! I read this article last summer and on my breaks at work regularly I would do the wall sits. My skating was improved noticeably through the flexibility in my stride. Not to ,mention as a cook standing all day my legs felt better. My speed was also improved. Thanks again

Thank you so much for taking the time to share what worked for you. I am a youth coach, but I also play and as a 44 year old woman, I am really struggling with my training now that I am no spring chicken! Thanks for such specific guidance.

Jarod, thanks a ton. Howtohockey.com has been a go to source for me since i started playing hockey only 5 months ago and my teammates are impressed with my progression. I credit this site and the articles Jeremy and his team put together for us! Your contribution is much appreciated!! oh and Go Stars!!

[…] It is not too easy to improve your skating technique during the summer (unless you can get ice time) however it is easy to improve your leg power and acceleration. This is a great way to come back next year as a faster hockey player, I think acceleration is a very important skill to have if you want to get more scoring chances so this is a big one to work on. If you want to improve your hockey speed, you have to train your muscles to work in the same way they work on the ice. Short bursts of speed and explosive movements will help improve your leg strength and speed. Wind sprints are a good way to improve your explosive speed and you I also recommend checking out our article from Jarod Palmer of the Minnesota Wild – How to gain speed in hockey with off ice training […]

Thanks so much for all the hockry tips! I suffered a really bad injury in AAA hockey and had to learn to skate all over again. I have been playing floor hockey quite a lot, but I can’t wait to get back on the ice and play again. I feel like I’m ready to try house hockey next season. Thanks so much!

The article was written by a player with a lot of experience in competitive hockey so the drills likely came from a variety of sources. If you are looking for a complete training program for hockey you can check out the HockeyOT program, the link is at the top of this article (highlighted in yellow)

Thanks so much for this wonderful article! Thanks Jarod for sharing this with us! And good luck with your season. Also thank you Jeremy for building such a wonderful website and helping everyone by writing these articles. You make many many differences in the hockey players lives that read your articles. And Jarod may have just made a difference that decides if someone gets drafted or not. Thanks to both of you for your time and hard work!!

Awesome information, amazing what just a persons body weight can accomplish during workouts. Thank you Jarod for taking the time to share this, best of luck with your season. Jeremy, thank you for your top shelf resources.

Oh this article is fantastic! Especially as a girl who plays with the boys, I’m always looking for a way to keep up to their speed (as nature already has me at a bit of a disadvantage), I’m hoping this will really help me out!

Thanks for a great article. I have recently become aware that I am also one of those quad-dominant people who tends to get onto the toes and consequently burns out fast. While doing some power skating form exercises/poses I realized that a deep knee bend doesn’t necessarily have to burn the quads if you can think like Jarod suggests. These exercises will really help make it habit.

BTW, it might sound stupid, but I never realized until recently that the push in the skating stride should begin from the heel, pass through the center of the blade, and finish with the toe. Add the 90 degree squat to that and the suggestions in this article now make total sense to me.

I enjoy articles and content that can assist me developing dryland training programs for youth hockey players for 8 and 10 year hold. However I need to have a progression for kids up to 12-14 years old